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Chapter 1
The book starts off in the Barracks with an African woman named Ba-Lunda, who is lying down covered in many medicinal herbs fighting a fever. Nasako, Ba-Lunda’s daughter, watches over in worry, while the medicine woman works to cure her. Five days ago, Ba-Lunda was in the worst of her fever, covered in a bloody sieve, she hallucinated a man named Jabi, who gave her a kiss on her back. It is revealed that if Ba-Lunda does not improve in three days then friends of the plantation will arrive to dig up a hole and bury her in it. The butler and the foreman who are in charge of thirty four slaves, kill the sick if they do not improve in order to minimize an outbreak. When the butler arrives in the barracks where Ba-Lunda is surrounded by women attempting to tend to her, he yells at them to go to bed. All the women scatter except for Mina Mocanda, who stares back at the butler in defiance. It is shown that the butler touches the women in an inappropriate manner repeatedly, after Mina states that she knows the value of silence, after the butler patted her thigh. The next day after the medicine woman airs out the room, Ba-Lunda wakes up in a haze. The plantation carries the smell of smallpox, men and women cover their noses and come together to ask their gods for the health of the people around them by dancing and chanting. At the end of the chapter it is revealed that Ba-Lunda misses Jabi, who she has been with for five years, and misses her home terribly.

Chapter 2
Chapter two talks about the capture of Ba-Lunda and her daughter, Nasako, who was an infant at the time. After saying goodbye to her husband, Ba-Lunda walked down to the river with Nasako in order to perform songs to Oddan, a religious practice. When Ba-Lunda placed Nazako under the shade of a tree she heard a strange noise. Scared for her daughter, she began to do her weekly chants to Oddan and was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Ba-Lunda looked at her daughter, who was sleeping, and doubted herself over hearing the noise. When Ba-Lunda kneeled down to drink some water from the river she was attacked by a man who grabbed her and covered her mouth with his hands. They fell into the river, Ba-Lunda managed to set herself free for a time and tried to make her way to her daughter. When she realized she was close to an area where her husband, Jabi, could hear her from the window, she attempted to scream but slipped when the man grabbed her ankle and fell. Hearing her daughter cry, Ba-Lunda managed to stand up, ignoring the blood in her mouth, and made it to her daughter who was unharmed. Thinking she escaped, she ran towards her home but was surrounded by many men and was captured. At the end of the chapter, she was placed on a boat with many other people who were captured, heading to Cadiz.

Chapter 3
Chapter three talks about Jabi’s reaction to his missing wife and Ba-Lunda’s experience on the boat. When Jabi noticed that his wife had not returned, he went out to search for her and found her belongings on the ground. Jabi spent days searching for Ba-Lunda and Nasako, calling out their names and crying everyday that many people have started to believe that Jabi had gone crazy with grief. Meanwhile, Ba-Lunda describes her time on the boat and the many people that she meets and talks with. While at sea, many people die of sickness, where their bodies are thrown overboard by the men in charge. Ba-Lunda notes how the entire ship smells of vomit, decomposing things, and death. After ten days, they arrived in Cadiz where they had to wait a week for a ship that would take them to America and then to their final destination in Cartagena.

Chapter 4
Chapter four talks about the arrival of Ba-Lunda and the other passengers to Cartagena where they walk off as a group to the plantation where they would be put to work. After being attacked by a tiger, the group is split into two groups to minimize making noise in order to not attract any more predators. When arriving at the plantation, Ba-Lunda is put to work where she spends most of her time near a cave where she places Nazako while she works. The butler that was introduced in chapter one rapes Ba-Lunda in the cave and afterwards gives her a new name, Rosa Jumandi. Over time, Ba-Lunda adjusts to her new life and is taught about Christianity by a priest. All of the slaves are baptized and given new names with Nasako’s name being changed to Juana Carabali. Ba-Lunda angered by the change in her identity and her rape plans to murder the people in charge of the plantation by poisoning them with plants that she finds near the plantation. She successfully poisons them, except for the butler, but everyone is immediately interrogated. After many interrogations where no one says anything, Ba-Lunda gets away with the murder, but new people take over the previous leaders.

Chapter 5
Chapter five starts with Kan, which is the voice and the messages that are passed between plantations when the slaves are not allowed to interact with each other. Rosa is faced with the fact that killing one master and priest does not eradicate the problem, another simply fills their place. The slaves continue to organize in secret, using Kan and the chants to send secret messages back and forth. Rosa feels secure and confident that her daughter and her descendants will be strong and escape slavery, finding a way to live better lives. Carmen, a friend of Ba-Lunda’s, falls ill and eventually passes, which highlights the injustice and unhealthy conditions the slaves experienced in the Barracks. After this tragedy, the slaves continue planning to escape, but then Juana becomes ill. Rosa is faced with the idea that if her daughter dies, she has no reason to continue living. As the plan to escape progresses, Ba-Lunda is skeptical of the result, remembering that her murders did not solve any problems. The slaves decide that the last week of November, which is filled with holidays and distractions, is the best time to try and escape. The guide helps them leave the plantacion, allowing Juana to join them, when he typically does not allow children. They escape into the jungle, but are quickly pursued. Trying to hide from the search parties, Ba-Lunda takes her daughter and climbs a tree. However, her daughter’s smell attracted the dogs and she was discovered. Being led back to the plantation with the other slaves that were caught, they were fearful of the whippings they would receive. One man was castrated for his attempt.

Chapter 6
In the beginning of this chapter, we open with Jabi’s concern for his daughter and Ba-Lunda because he has had no news about their fates. He is desperate and even considering turning himself into a group of traffickers in a desperate attempt to be reunited with his wife and daughter. With Ba-Lunda’s strong connection to the river near their home, Jabi feels a sense of contentment and joy while drinking from it, remembering happier times with her. He also recalls the superior sexual abilities of his wife and is unable to be with another woman in her absence. Moving forward, Jabi is resolute in his decision to help his daughter, Nasako, in any way necessary, so he goes to a shaman for help. The shaman, in connection with the spirits, senses that Nasako is a cheerful, energetic, and feisty spirit, so he decides to send a horse spirit to guide her, naming her Nasako Zansi. Being lost in thoughts about his daughter’s new protector, Jabi is surprised and does not realize, until it is too late, that he is in danger and is taken prisoner by slave traffickers. He is resigned to his fate, latching on to the sliver of hope that he will see Ba-Lunda and Nasako again. Changing to Ba-Lunda’s perspective on the slave plantation, the author describes a nativity scene and the enslaved people gathering around, telling stories and worshiping their gods. One old man tells a story of his passage to the Americas and the peril. Another man talks about slaves being forced to work in mines, which slowly kills them with the intake of the dust in the air. Distracted with the preparations for the holiday, many of them choose to plan their escape, knowing the overseers and the dogs will not be quite as alert. While chanting and singing the songs of their ancestors, Rosa and Juana ran to take shelter in a cave as one of the storytellers fell dead. Rosa says that she imagines it does not take much courage to ingest the poisonous liquid and leave this suffering. The slaves continued their ritual, singing and dancing, while most of them chose to end their lives, using their knowledge of herbs and the land to create a poison. Ba-Lunda looks on those who took their lives with a sense of sadness, knowing she will never be able to truly know these people or their stories now that they have made this choice. Hearing that the masters might sell the remaining slaves, Ba-Lunda thinks about the possibility of being separated from Nasako and is sad that she did not join in the ritual suicide and drink the poison. In the final part of the chapter, chaos breaks out as the slaves realize they are being sold to other farms and mills. Ba-Lunda is anxious over being separated from her daughter and with a heightened blood pressure, she falls to the ground with a massive heart attack. The other slaves try to pick her back up, but she is already gone. With hardly any time to grieve her mother, Juana is sold to a different hacienda to be raised by a woman and her husband, who was crippled from burns on his arms. The old woman taught her to cook and make desserts and jellies. Juana sold her goods outside the church on Sundays, which is where she met Manuel Espinosa. They fell in love and she gave birth to three children, all of whom died at a young age from diseases. With no hope of being pregnant again, Juana soon finds she is to give birth to another. This time it is a girl that smells like a horse and makes soft neighing noises, she is named Nasako Zansi. Nasako has small pox when she is young, marking her face and is told that when she is older, she will be feisty and strong willed. While growing close and developing a strong and unbreakable bond between mother and daughter, Juana worries that the scars on Nasako’s face will create problems for her in the future. However, deciding that those worries are for when Nasako is older, Juana and her enjoy each other’s company now.

Chapter 7
This chapter starts off with a poem from Juana’s perspective about her life, but mainly about her love and experience with Manuel and Nasako. While at breakfast one morning, Juana realizes that all of the slaves on her plantation are to be sold to different masters and realizes she will be separated from Nasako Zansi. They were marched to a raised platform in the city to be inspected and sold at a slave auction. The man that buys Nasako Zansi does so with the purpose of finding a friend for his daughter, that was a result of his adultery. He wanted a playmate for his daughter that was adventurous and lively. He found it difficult to find children for sale, due to slave women taking a contraceptive to prevent bringing their children into slavery. The man decides that he wants Nasako and she is sold and separated from her mother. The remaining slaves decide they do not want to be sold, so they resist and are killed. In the chaos, Juana escapes from the platform and the auction. She finds people that have bought their freedom and started their own businesses. She gets a job preparing food and desserts for parties, while continuing to search for her daughter, wanting to purchase her freedom. However, without proper resources and Nasako’s name being changed, Juana never found her. Eventually, a stranger walks into her house and shop, whom she eventually got married to and moved with to Barbacoas, where she started an inn and employed other women, whom she paid with food.

Chapter 8
In this chapter we follow Nasako Zansi and her introduction to Manuela, the daughter that she is to be friends with. Nasako Zansi’s name was changed to Jonatas. In the beginning, Don Simon, her new master, would often come to visit his daughter and Jonatas, but eventually he stopped. Jonatas is near inconsolable with her separation from her mother. The other women tried to comfort her, but Jonatas felt that she would rather die than be separated from her mother. In her new life, Jonatas challenged the typical customs and became friends with her young master, Manuela. The two were energetic and adventurous, always running around the plantation. In the meantime, Jonatas taught Manuela about slave rituals, their stories, and their songs. Their nightly excursions pushed boundaries and is where they learned about the surrounding landscape and the animals. Many times Jonatas was forced to ask herself why her people were slaves and the Spaniards were their master? What was truly the difference? This led to a fight between Jonatas and Manuela, where they came to physical blows and did not talk for a few days. However, Manuela came back and they returned to the sugarcane fields. Eventually, Jonatas realized that her and Manuela’s knowledge could help her find Juana, her mother. Manuela often comforted her when Jonatas would cry about the loss of her mother. As they grew older, they would take horses and their excursions lengthened. Jonatas felt at home on a horse and would often be struck by memories of her ancestors and Africa.

Chapter 9
Chapter nine starts with Jonatas in the living room of one of Dona Maria, a caretaker of manuela, and Jonatas is transported to a time long before she was born, with memories of her grandparents. In this house she encounters a mirror for the first time and finds herself ugly. However as she stands there longer, she realizes that she is more than her physical appearance. After this, Jonatas goes to Manuela who expresses a desire to dress like Jonatas and embrace African styles. Then Jonatas speaks with the other slaves that worked in the house and they recounted how they were violently ripped from their lives and sold from one master to another, with the emphasis that “This was the will of God.” Seeing this injustice, the young people choose to band together and fight the slave system, with Jonatas as the leader. This group goes to a house and enters, robbing the inhabitants of their jewels and gold, while the inhabitants make love and are distracted. They are doing this so they can live a life without fear of punishment or retribution. Learning of their lives, Manuela and Jonatas grow closer in Don Simon’s absence and Manuela develops a resentment towards her father. She then witnessed him whipping a slave and felt secure in her abhorrence of him.